


Flight

by cjmarlowe



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: First Time, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-War, recovering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-02
Updated: 2012-09-02
Packaged: 2017-11-13 09:58:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/502244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cjmarlowe/pseuds/cjmarlowe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neville knew, once the Ministry announced the waiving of all academic requirements to enter Auror training, that they were still needed to fight the fight. But nobody was ready yet in the first few weeks following the fall of Voldemort. They all needed to find themselves again, Neville as much as anyone, so when Harry decided to invite him along on an impromptu escape he thought it might be exactly what he was looking for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pitry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pitry/gifts).



"So what's your plan, mate?" said Ron over a shared table in the corner of the Leaky Cauldron. Where once Ron would have handed over a butterbeer (or, more likely, got one and then kept it for himself), now they split the remains of a bottle of Ogden's. "Back to school, do you think?"

"Same as you and Harry," said Neville, surprised he even needed to ask. Going back to Hogwarts didn't seem like much of a choice, not yet, and there weren't a lot of other options open to him. 

"You're going into Auror training?" said Ron. "Didn't even know you were interested."

"My parents were both Aurors," said Neville, rather than admit he _wasn't_ interested. Or at least, that he wasn't interested forever. 

It wasn't that anyone was trying to coerce him, or even convince him. It was just that after the Battle of Hogwarts, almost as soon as the dust had cleared and the bodies had been buried, the Ministry announced they were waiving all academic requirements to enter Auror training for the heroes of the battle. It didn't need to be said that it was because they were still needed to fight the fight.

Neville would fight this fight to the end.

"Hermione won't, even though she could," said Ron, "and Ginny's going back to school. George isn't...." He paused there, still too soon to examine that loss. "The rest of the family already have jobs to go back to. No idea what Luna's doing, of course."

"She might join up with me," said Neville. It was hard to tell, with Luna. "Seamus and Dean, too. Dean for certain. Once we're all...once it's time."

The one thing Neville knew for sure was that it hadn't been time in those first couple of weeks after the battle. Sure, they'd celebrated their victory, but once the celebration wound down the toll of the war finally had a chance to sink in. He wasn't sure any of them were quite ready to jump back in yet without immediate and pressing danger. Let those who spent the past few months safely off the battlefields take up the slack for a little while.

"Sooner the better, if you ask me," said Ron, but with the benefit of years with coping with loss and hardship, Neville figured that was mostly because Ron had things he'd like very much to be distracted from. "Get it all done with."

"I don't think it's going to be as easy as that." Which probably didn't need to actually be said; if anyone already knew that, it was them. Expecting smooth sailing now that Voldemort had been defeated was a kind of breezy speculation best left to the Prophet.

"I'll have to tell Harry you're joining up too," said Ron, draining the last of his drink in one swallow. It went down so smoothly, Neville had to wonder just when Ron got so used to it. Whether it was just this past month, or in the months before when the three of them had been on the run.

"Is he back, then?"

"Couple of days ago. Mum's feeding him up but I think he feels awkward, staying with us. Everything's a little...." Ron seemed helpless to finish the sentence, and Neville didn't ask. "But where else is he going to stay? With his horrible aunt and uncle? Or alone in that big house?"

"Not sure either one of them's even safe yet," agreed Neville. "You lot might as well be his family anyway."

"Mum's always treated him that way," said Ron, nodding. "And Merlin knows Ginny's not sorry to have him in the house. I'm not convinced he's done with travelling yet, though. Seems to me he needs to get away more than he needs to stay, right now."

"So you're waiting for him, then," said Neville. "To join the Aurors, you're waiting for Harry."

"We're all waiting for Harry," said Ron. "They're not about to start training without him on board."

Neville found himself hoping that Harry was going to take a little more time, then, because Neville could use a little more time too.

"Suppose I ought to be getting back," said Ron. "I only meant to pop in for a moment, but you were sitting here—"

"I often am," admitted Neville.

"—and I wanted to catch up. Didn't realize we'd've been catching up soon all the same."

"Soon enough," agreed Neville. "And if Harry's looking for someplace else to stay...well, I've got the room. Suppose he could get one just as well on his own, but if he'd rather not."

He hadn't known he was going to make the offer until it was out of the mouth, but he didn't want to take it back once it was. Everything was different now. Maybe this was something that should be different too.

*

It was the first time in Neville's life that he was neither staying at Hogwarts nor living with his Gran. Or at least, the first time he could remember; he'd spent his infancy with his parents, but he didn't have any memories of them outside of St. Mungo's. It didn't feel as strange as he thought it would, though the first few days were freeing in a way he'd never experienced before. After the way he'd been living the past year, nearly anything would have made him feel free.

He tried to pay for his room at the Leaky but Tom wasn't having any of it. Tom'd probably change his mind after another couple of weeks, especially now that business had picked up again, but Neville wasn't going to argue the point until then. Originally he'd chosen the place for its proximity to Diagon Alley, but it turned out he didn't go through very often, even though he would've liked to. There were just too many people wanting a moment of his time, and he wondered now if this was how Harry Potter felt all along. But inside Tom's pub, everyone was less demanding. They looked at him and they bought him drinks, most of which Neville gracefully declined, but they never asked for more than he was willing to give.

Whatever small peace Neville'd found for himself there, though, it was completely shattered when Harry Potter showed up one evening and joined him at his table.

Neville alone was merely a point of interest. Neville with Harry was a beacon for every witch and wizard in the room.

"Hi Harry," he said, as Tom hastily brought them something to eat and drink, though neither had asked. "I heard you were back."

"Ron?"

Neville nodded. "We had drinks the other day," he said. "He said you were staying at the Burrow for a few days. Can't imagine what that's like right now."

"Better than it was," said Harry. It had been nearly a month now, which felt both longer and shorter than Neville's gut reckoning of the passage of time. "You know how it is."

Neville just nodded and helped himself to a sandwich. Cold sliced beef on surprisingly fresh bread, not what he was used to, even with his special attentions lately. "The Weasleys have always been close." 

"Ron said you might have a place I could stay," Harry ventured. "I don't need much room. I'm used to being tucked in odd corners."

"You know Tom'd give you a room, you wouldn't even need to ask," said Neville. But maybe the same thing that made him offer in the first place made Harry inclined to take him up on it. Sometimes, you just didn't want to do it all alone. "My room's plenty big enough for two, though. Could transfigure another bed from the corner table. I always come down here if I want to eat, after all, and it's not as though I've got any schoolwork to do."

"Thanks," said Harry, and took a sip of his drink, making a face a moment later. "If it's all the same to everyone, I'll stick to butterbeer. I'm not in a hurry to acquire a taste for anything stronger."

As if to make it clear that their conversation was anything but private, two bottles appeared on the table a moment later. 

"Maybe we ought to take this upstairs," said Neville. Between them they could cast about a half dozen privacy charms of various effects and durations, but that was still more discreetly done when you weren't in a room full of patrons. When you did that in front of people, they assumed you had secrets worth telling, and when they didn't know what those secrets were, they started making them up.

"I've got the drinks if you've got the sandwiches," said Harry, and Neville actually laughed as they dashed out of the room and up the back stairs. It felt good, and surprising, to laugh like that again, which made him wonder just how long it had been. Maybe the celebration at Hogwarts, in the heady rush right after Voldemort's defeat, before he'd really got a sense of what it all had cost them.

Neville worried it might be awkward, finding things to say to Harry now, but once the ice had been broken—and who would have thought there would ever be ice to break, but the war had changed things—they fell in comfortably together again. Like they were back in the boys' dorm, and nothing had ever changed.

The table ended up serving its intended purpose for what might have been the first time, until the food and drink was gone and Harry transfigured his own bed from it. From the look of it, he'd had as much experience doing that over the past year as Neville had.

"You've been here, the whole time?" Harry asked him, taking his robes off and leaving them on the floor, stretching out in just his pants and testing out his mattress. Neville made an effort not to look; Harry's modesty had apparently vanished at some point over the past year, along with his anger and Neville's reticence.

"More or less," said Neville. "I stayed with Gran for a few days, but I couldn't...I needed to be off on my own for a little while, I think. She seemed proud of me for that."

"Oh," said Harry. "You know, I can stay someplace else...."

"No, this is different," said Neville. "This is good."

Harry seemed satisfied with that answer, inadequate as it felt. "You ought to go somewhere," he said, though. "Somewhere further away than this. The Leaky is practically our back garden."

"I thought about it," said Neville, "but I don't know where I'd go. I don't know where else I'd want to be."

"How about Egypt?" said Harry. "Bill's just gone back, with Fleur. The first to leave the nest again. I've got an invitation to visit them any time I like."

"I thought he was still working in Gringotts London."

"Suppose people feel like they can do what they really want to again," said Harry. "Egypt's as good a place as any to raise kids. I think his mum thought he'd stick around longer, but...." He just shrugged. They couldn't all stay at the Burrow forever.

"They haven't got any kids," said Neville, but then he supposed nothing was stopping them from starting a family now. Nothing was stopping people from doing all kinds of things.

"Yet," said Harry, and gave him a little smile. "Listen, I'm knackered, you mind if I get some sleep? I don't want to be rude."

"Not rude at all," said Neville. It had got late when he wasn't looking, and he felt as though he was going to sleep easier than he had been tonight, with Harry in the room. One would think it would be the opposite, that trouble followed Harry wherever he went, but not for Neville.

*

The next morning, with hardly even any discussion about it, they left for Egypt on broomstick. It wasn't Neville's favourite way to travel but there wasn't a portkey available and it was too far to Apparate in one go for them. Plus, it was Harry's idea to fly, and Harry's companionship made the whole thing go just a little bit faster.

At least Neville didn't struggle with it anymore, and something about flying had always seemed to make Harry more at ease. If Neville was going to pick up and leave England on a whim and Harry's mad idea, this was probably the best way to do it.

Bill's home was a wide, flat, open building that bore no resemblance whatsoever to Shell Cottage. Desert instead of sea. Though Harry hadn't had time to write ahead Bill welcomed them all the same, and didn't bat an eye that Harry'd brought someone along with him. Maybe he even seemed pleased about it, if surprised that it hadn't been Ron.

"I've got to get to the site," he said, and Fleur had already gone to her own job, though Neville hadn't been entirely clear on what that was (and from the sidelong looks that Fleur and Bill had been giving one another, intentionally so), "but make yourselves at home."

Ostensibly the trip was to visit Bill, but mostly Neville and Harry were left to their own devices, wandering the dunes and making an effort not to trigger any long-dormant (or not so dormant) curses in the general area. Theoretically, it was no more dangerous than going to classes at Hogwarts, but Neville still tread lightly.

Mostly it was nothing at all like England, or Scotland, or anywhere that Neville had spent any length of time for...well, years now, not just the past year or so. That was the best and the worst thing about it.

"Nobody knows us here," said Harry.

Neville shook his head. "Harry, everybody knows you," he said. "All over the world. Sorry, mate."

"It's different, though," he said. But it wasn't getting away from being known that had driven Neville here, it was the chance to see something _else_ for a little while. To experience a life that wasn't shaped by the actions of a madman. He wondered which it was for Harry. "Is it weird that I feel like going swimming?"

Neville looked all around them and laughed. "Wrong kind of sand," he said. "I think you must've been aiming for a beach somewhere and overshot."

"We'll have to go somewhere with beaches next," said Harry. He didn't seem to be in any hurry, and if Harry wasn't in a hurry, Neville wasn't going to be in a hurry either.

"Lots of places with beaches," said Neville. He imagined Spain, or maybe the south of France, and decided he would be rather content with that for a little while. He knew at least three different recipes for sunburn balms, after all, just in case. Now _that_ was the sort of potion he was quite good at.

"Do you want to go to Cairo?" said Harry suddenly. "We could go shopping."

"Don't really need anything," said Neville. And though he did all right for himself, he didn't have Harry's substantial inheritance either. "You didn't come to Egypt to buy new robes."

"No, I didn't," agreed Harry, and they kept walking through the desert sand.

They mostly saw Bill and Fleur each night for dinner, a meal they took privately rather than with the rest of the encampment. Neville figured maybe they were having a bit of a delayed honeymoon, since they hadn't really had much time to enjoy being married yet. And here he and Harry were, in the middle of it.

"Have you visited the work site yet?" Fleur asked them. "Bill has asked me, but I don't like to be so far underground."

"Figured if we did that it would be more work than holiday," said Harry, and Neville had to agree that, exciting as it would have been, right now he'd prefer not to be cursed for a little while.

"If it's a real holiday you want," said Bill, "you should stay at Shell Cottage for a while. It's sitting empty right now, and it's nice and private."

Though, not as private as it had been. They all had certain memories of the place, but not necessarily bad ones. There had been far worse places to be than that safe haven during the war. Bill wasn't offering it as a safe haven, though, and probably hadn't even thought of how Neville and Harry would remember it. He was offering it as their home.

"Might do that," said Harry, polite without sounding like he was going to run out and do that after the pudding. Neville didn't remember Harry ever being so plausibly diplomatic, though he hadn't seen a lot of how Harry was with the people he thought of as family.

Bill smiled at him fondly, like Harry really was a little brother, and carried on with supper.

*

It was about a week before they left for Greece, where they spent three days playing tourist and wearing ridiculous hats and visiting all of the ancient wizarding sites that they'd read about but never actually made the trip to see before. (Well, Neville had read about them, and Harry had heard about some from Hermione.) 

But more than that they went to the beach and played in the surf with the Muggle children and it was more fun than Neville could have imagined. Some things just had magic of their own. They didn't need any help.

And of course after Greece they flew to Italy, because it was hard to experience one without having the other to compare it to, and Neville and Harry had been staying up late talking about wizarding history, Neville filling in the gaps where Harry's early education had failed him, and both of them making up stories when neither knew the answers. They talked about things that happened long before the war, before they'd met, before they'd even been born.

Neville felt like all his relationships these days were characterized by _not talking about it_ , even if they could talk about anything else. You could talk around the battle, around the war, but you didn't talk _about_ it anymore. You didn't mention the Battle of Hogwarts, even when the results of it were staring you in the face.

And that was okay. He and Harry had never talked like this before, just the two of them. Even with the five boys in their year, during better days, it hadn't been like _this_. It wasn't just the easy stuff, the beaches and the tombs and the monuments and the dazzling little treats in the sweetshops of wizarding Rome. It wasn't just late nights talking about the time Neville fell halfway through the floor of the boys' loo or the legend of Alexios of Athens, inventor of the chicken plucking charm. One night in Sicily Harry started talking about his childhood, things Neville might've known but never heard him talk about. And so that same night Neville started talking about his.

It didn't go deeper than stories upon stories and memories upon memories, which was an end unto itself, really. It wasn't about feelings, about hopes and fears and the past and the future, it was stories. It was words. It was the narrative of their lives so far, like they were reading books to one another.

It felt intimate anyway, like Neville was getting pieces of Harry that nobody else had, even though realistically he was sure that both Ron and Hermione had all of these pieces too. He felt like he was getting a little bit of something that he'd dreamed about once, and that little bit was maybe enough.

*

After they'd exhausted the possibilities—well, not exhausted them, just _became_ exhausted with the relentless tourism—they took to their brooms to visit Charlie Weasley, recently returned to Romania. Harry insisted he had an open invitation there too, but whether he did or he didn't, Charlie seemed pleased and not entirely surprised to see them.

An owl bearing post would have gone from Egypt to Romania in far less time than Harry and Neville's circuitous route, after all.

"As long as you're here, I'm going to put you to work," said Charlie, buying a round for the table to celebrate their arrival. A table that included not only Neville and Harry but a half a dozen of the people Charlie worked with, who'd likely only just celebrated his own rearrival not so very long ago. "There's an enclosure that needs shovelling out."

"You want us to shovel dragon dung?"

Charlie managed to keep a straight face for a long time, and Neville reminded himself how many uses dragon dung had in herbology. It was a very important job. And so he was a lot less put off than Harry, but eventually Charlie cracked and shook his head.

"Might get you to fly a couple of patrols, though. We're stretched a little thin and, well, Harry Potter's nothing if not an exceptional flyer. Oh, and, uh, Neville—"

"Should stick with the dragon dung?" he finished wryly.

"Thought I might steal you for the nursery," said Charlie, "but I'd hate to split the two of you up. Course, you don't _have_ to—"

"We can fly patrol," Harry interrupted him. "Less likely to have something breathe fire on you when you're up in the air." And he looked pointedly at Charlie's freshest scars.

"You'd think so, wouldn't you?" said Charlie, then grinned at him and bought another round.

True to their word, Harry and Neville flew patrol around the eastern reaches of the dragon sanctuary, a fairly tedious job, other than the flying bit, but one that proved its importance when they spotted a juvenile Horntail working its way out past the boundaries of the sanctuary.

They stayed at Charlie's place, in his spare room that was mostly filled with bits of this and that, equipment and scorched gloves and harnesses, but still housed two narrow beds on either side of the room. It was small in the good way, not cramped but cozy.

"What was it like?" Harry asked late on the third night, Charlie snoring in the other room. "What was it like, staying there? Staying at Hogwarts."

So this was how it was going to happen. Out of the blue, but inevitably all the same, like they'd been building to this conversation for the past couple of weeks and finally crested the dam in the middle of an otherwise quiet night.

Neville didn't answer for a moment, not because he didn't want to but because he didn't know how. "I just knew we had to hang on," he said finally. "We knew you'd come."

"But what was it like," said Harry. "I've heard...and I saw...but I still don't know."

There was another pause while Neville collected his thoughts, punctuated only by Charlie's snores. "It was miserable, Harry," he said finally. "They were awful, and it broke my heart to see Hogwarts that way. But we were all right."

"I never dreamed it would end that way," said Harry. "I guess I should have known it was always going to come back to Hogwarts. It always had to be there."

"I wish people would never have had to have gone through all of that stuff," said Neville. "Little kids, way too young to handle it, you know? But if we hadn't, then maybe we wouldn't have been ready to fight like we did when the time came. Maybe it had to happen that way, so it could finally all end."

He could hear Harry shift in his bed, but he didn't give in to the temptation to illuminate the room. "But what about _you_?"

"I did what I had to do," said Neville. Even with Harry, even now, he didn't know how to talk about this one thing. He'd been putting on a brave face for everyone for so long that he didn't have any idea how to stop, even now that he could. "I don't think I've really...I think maybe I still am. I think maybe we still are."

"Yeah," said Harry, and the way he said it, it was like he understood. Like he got what Neville wasn't saying because he'd been there too.

It wasn't like they'd just been through a rough year of school. They'd been on the run. They'd been tortured. They'd fought in a war and they'd both very nearly died. They'd both been willing to die, and to do things harder than dying. That was no small thing, and maybe nothing that could ever be expressed in exactly the right way to make someone else understand. Maybe you had to be talking to someone else who already understood in the first place.

"Do you remember when we met?" said Neville, not changing the subject, not really.

"On the train to Hogwarts," said Harry. "My whole world had just opened up. I was seeing my life, my real life, for the first time. I could see a future."

"I was terrified," said Neville. "I'd grown up with it all and I still didn't know if I'd ever belong."

"We did all right," said Harry after a moment. "We both did all right in the end."

"And now we can see a future again," said Neville. "It's been a while."

"I wasn't sure you'd want to come with me, on this trip, even when I came to fetch you," said Harry after a pause, just long enough for Neville to wonder if the conversation was over for the night. "Figured I'd probably be taking it alone again."

"Harry, I'll always go where you go," said Neville.

There was quiet for a few moments, the sounds of breathing and snoring and the distant rumble of dragons or thunder, then the scritch of sliding blankets and soft footsteps and the tilt of someone else getting into his bed. Neville didn't say anything, but he did hold the covers up for Harry. And he did remember to keep breathing.

In the morning Harry was still there, taking up three quarters of the bed while Neville balanced at the edge. He might've said something about it, but he'd never seen Harry comfortable enough to take up so much space in all the time he'd known him. He did nudge him a little, though, because he could smell breakfast and that meant Charlie would be along any moment if he hadn't poked his head in already.

"We should go to Shell Cottage," said Harry, without opening his eyes.

"Wake up," said Neville, nudging him again. 

"I am awake," said Harry, "and we should go to Shell Cottage. We should take Bill up on his invitation."

And maybe it _was_ time to find their way back to England, if not back to London and the job that was inevitably waiting for them both. Maybe it was time to start heading home.

*

They Apparated to Shell Cottage rather than flew, three separate jaunts (they might have been able to do it in one, but neither felt the need to take that chance) that left Neville nearly vomiting when they arrived. It would have been easier if he'd gone under his own power, but they'd been clinging together to ensure they arrived in the same place each leg, and the special kind of tugging that went with side-along Apparition did not agree with Neville's digestive system. Nor Harry's, from the look of him.

"Not exactly the romantic getaway I was imagining," said Harry, giving Neville a tentative grin, and though it was hard to feel buoyant through that level of nausea, that was still the moment Neville knew they were on the same page.

"I could use a glass of water before we, uh, do anything," admitted Neville, and Harry gave him a sympathetic smile as he unlocked the front door. It didn't take Neville long to find his feet again, or at least to shake off the effects of the Apparition. Harry had him off balance too, and no amount of water or fresh air or time was going to settle that one for him.

It took him three tries, with Harry backed patiently against the wall by the door, but Neville finally kissed him, and Harry finally kissed him back.

"Never imagined all of that would lead us here," he said after a few moments, his lips still damp and tingling.

"Never?"

"Okay, I imagined it," Neville admitted. But imagining it and realistically thinking it were entirely different things. "Sometimes. A little bit."

He didn't ask if Harry imagined it ever. It didn't matter now.

"I feel like I just met you for the first time, in that room at the Leaky," said Harry. "I knew Neville, but I didn't know _you_."

Harry did, though. He always had. It was just that this past year had remade both of them. Maybe Harry didn't see it in himself as much, but Neville saw it. He'd always admired him, but the man who came through the war was someone new too.

"Now you know everything," said Neville, which was very nearly true.

Harry took him inside after that, and it was a full four days before either of them felt the need to leave the security of Shell Cottage and its rocky shore. It was a kind of peace Neville didn't think either of them had found anywhere else, or with anyone else. Neville had his best friends and Harry had his best friends, but neither of them had anyone else who was _this_.

Neville had always looked at Harry a little bit like that, ever since they'd just become teenagers together, but he still never understood that something like this—brilliant and comfortable and brand new—was a place it all might end up.

*

Neville and Harry arrived in Hogsmeade on a Saturday afternoon, Apparating the distance individually but with brooms firmly in hand because they knew where they'd soon be flying onward to.

"Have you been back, since?" Neville asked only after they landed at the outskirts of the village, on a familiar road.

Harry shook his head, and Neville wasn't surprised. He hadn't been back since either. It wasn't a decision to stay away so much as a need to spend some time going in the direction of other things. He still had a lot of intense feelings about what happened at Hogwarts, and it hadn't been nearly long enough yet for them to fade.

They ignored curious, if well-meaning, gazes, picked up some sweets at Honeydukes and generally lingered in the once-again prospering town before turning up towards their ultimate destination. Neville would have spent all day in Hogsmeade, and quite contentedly, but now that they were here it was impossible to get Hogwarts off his mind.

The castle looked like the place Neville remembered from better times, not the one he endured this past year. It looked like the Hogwarts that students dreamed of attending, and Neville wasn't sure if some witches and wizards had been hard at work or if the place was capable of healing itself, of patching its own wounds and mending its own broken pieces till it was strong and whole again.

They walked through the Quidditch pitch first, Harry looking up at the sky like he was imagining he was in the middle of a match. Neville'd watched enough of them, but he never played like Harry did, didn't have great Quidditch matches past in his head to draw on. He didn't interrupt the reverie, but he did rest a hand on Harry's back as Harry twisted himself in half a circle, taking a look around.

So much had happened here. So much good and bad, so much good and _evil_. It wasn't possible to look at it the same way again, but Neville was finally looking at it as a place he'd like to return to someday. Not just for a quick visit, a stroll around the grounds, but return to. Maybe he'd come back and sit his NEWTs in a couple of years when he had the time, and see where things went from there.

The bridge was intact again, and Neville strolled it with Harry in a way he'd never strolled it with anyone before. It wasn't that he hadn't been interested in anyone enough to date in school. He'd dated, a few times, and had his share of moments. But looking back from this distant vantage point, even though he was still barely old enough to be out of school, he felt like he'd been so young then. He hadn't had any idea what he was doing.

They didn't go inside the castle. They hadn't been invited, and in the end, they didn't need to. Just seeing it where it stood was enough.

"London?" said Harry, and Neville nodded and echoed him and Harry took his hand.

Neville hadn't any idea where it was going to go from here, but it had the chance to go somewhere now, thanks to everything they'd done and everything they'd been through, and that was good enough for him.


End file.
